This board is a composition workshop, like a writers' workshop: post your work with questions about style or vocabulary, comment on other people's work, post composition challenges on some topic or form, or just dazzle us with your inventive use of galliambics.

I wrote this to practice result clauses using "ὡστε". Historical accuracy was a very secondary consideration though I don't think there are any out and out errors. Grammatical accuracy was my main priority though I suspect there may be still quite a few out and out errors in that respect.

I am writing in Ancient Greek not because I know Greek well, but because I hope that it will improve my fluency in reading. I got the idea for this from Adrianus over on the Latin forum here at Textkit.

εν takes the dative. You could use a partitive genitive too I guess but you would need a different preposition. τοσαυτας χωρας εν Ιταλιη επεκρατησαν οι Ρωμαιοι. There was not φοβυς but either ο φόβος, ο δέος or το δείμα.

οι του Πυρρου στρατηωτι ουτω εμπειροι ησαν ὡστε ενικησαι.

Can be sort of used like that, but sort of a Hebraisistic construction found in Koine etc. You need καίπερ + participle. οι του Πυρρου στρατηωταικαίπερ όντες εμπειροι. Soldier here is a masculine first declension though my modern Greek keeps forcing me to write es for ai! They take a while to get used to using...

τοσουτος ην ο κινδυνος ὡστε οι βουλευται ενεδεχοντο αιτειν περι ειρενης. Is a bit long isn't it? Do you need all these verbs. This reads so great was the danger that they he wished (because of ευται, which is single post plural article) to take it upon themselves to seek about the peace. So extra verb plus wrong ending plus an Anglicism. Αἰτέω for something in accusative, e.g: ᾔτεεν ἵππους from Homer. So just something like τοσουτος ην ο κινδυνος ὡστε οι ενεδεχοντο αιτειν ειρενην to keep it short.

Ok I'll have to leave it there but now. Overall quite good in that you got the feel and rhythm pretty well obviously the problem with practising a specific idea (ωστε) is that sometimes its going to sound a bit forced and sharp. Basically, its worth revising a bit the endings and learning how participles function in sentences, I've tried to keep corrections to a minimum both for time and since self correction and revision is the most effective. I don't want it to sound like I've taken a knife to it, for such an exercise it certainly wasn't bad.

εν takes the dative. You could use a partitive genitive too I guess but you would need a different preposition. τοσαυτας χωρας εν Ιταλιη επεκρατησαν οι Ρωμαιοι. There was not φοβυς but either ο φόβος, ο δέος or το δείμα.

Not only does εν take the dative but in doing so it is following the rule of thumb acc= movement to, gen=movement from, dat = fixed in place. An embarrassing mistake. Many thanks.

Can be sort of used like that, but sort of a Hebraisistic construction found in Koine etc. You need καίπερ + participle. οι του Πυρρου στρατηωταικαίπερ όντες εμπειροι. Soldier here is a masculine first declension though my modern Greek keeps forcing me to write es for ai! They take a while to get used to using...

I seem to have have badly wrong if you expect a καίπερ here. The intended sense wasThe soldiers of Pyrrhus were so experienced that they won.

I have, however, added μεντοι as that makes the intended contrast with the previous sentence clearer.(I am of course alluding to Heraclea and Ausculum where the Romans gave Pyrrhus a bloody nose even though in the end his troops won the battles)

Scribo wrote:τοσουτος ην ο κινδυνος ὡστε οι βουλευται ενεδεχοντο αιτειν περι ειρενης. Is a bit long isn't it? Do you need all these verbs. This reads so great was the danger that they he wished (because of ευται, which is single post plural article) to take it upon themselves to seek about the peace. So extra verb plus wrong ending plus an Anglicism. Αἰτέω for something in accusative, e.g: ᾔτεεν ἵππους from Homer. So just something like τοσουτος ην ο κινδυνος ὡστε οι ενεδεχοντο αιτειν ειρενην to keep it short.

Yup, trying to treat Αἰτέω as english "ask" led me astray.I have still kept senators rather than your suggested more open οι as the debate in which Appius Claudius made his intervention was a senate debate rather than that of the Roman people as a whole.

Scribo wrote:Ok I'll have to leave it there but now. Overall quite good in that you got the feel and rhythm pretty well obviously the problem with practising a specific idea (ωστε) is that sometimes its going to sound a bit forced and sharp. Basically, its worth revising a bit the endings and learning how participles function in sentences, I've tried to keep corrections to a minimum both for time and since self correction and revision is the most effective. I don't want it to sound like I've taken a knife to it, for such an exercise it certainly wasn't bad.

Don't be afraid of being too brutal any help is very welcome.I am aware that no native speaker would ever have over used ωστε to this extent. I have done this partly to ensure that through repetition that structure sinks in. It was also to test something. My favourite textbook is Taylor because the exercises are written with imagination which makes them interesting and hence both easier to do and more effective. They are however isolated sentences and lack context. Context provides and extra hint that helps you realise you have misunderstood something. Taylor's readings by contrast have little if any relation to the grammar being taught in the previous section. Hence I wanted to see if it was possible to write a coherent story just using one grammatical form.

If you are saying that no native speaker would use the same grammatical form 8 sentences in a row then my is answer is yes, but that was the point of the exercise.If you are saying, that in my effort to repeat the ὡστε-result form so many times, one or more of those individual sentences use the ὡστε-result form in a way that no native speaker would ever do then that is indeed a problem.

Oh right they won didn't they? Pyrrhic victory and all that, now that is an embarrassing mistake. Sorry, as I said, a bit overbusy.

No, they're not embarassing mistakes, but the kind of stuff that comes out when composing. Don't worry, its clearly on the right track. Yes, obviously when you impose such restrictions it will sound a bit odd, wste, wste wste etc but it does seem to be an effective exercise. I mean we used to learn similarly, worksheet of 15 result clauses using hina etc etc.